A tale of hazards: Ingenium’s industrial collections move

Abstract

In 2018, Ingenium began a large-scale collections move, consolidating artefacts from four rental warehouses into a new purpose built storage facility. Collection hazards were assessed, prioritised and treated according to Ingenium’s comprehensive Collection Risk Management Program (CRMP), placing health and safety at the forefront of collections care. This paper will present hazard assessment and mitigation in one warehouse, the Building 2421 Reserve Collection, showing the challenges overcome to move a large industrial collection on a tight schedule and with limited staffing and resources. A selection of case studies will provide examples of hazard mitigation in artefacts containing asbestos, radioactivity, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and mercury. The case studies demonstrate how simple solutions and triage treatments were implemented by conservators and specialised contractors in order to mitigate collection hazards during the move project. The Building 2421 Reserve Collection move was completed in December 2021 and the full collections move was completed in August 2022.